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Thursday, June 18, 2015

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: Afric by Eileen Enwright Hodgetts

A drama ripped from today’s headlines.1963: As European colonists flee the Congo, a witchdoctor finds an abandoned child and teaches him the power of hatred. A hundred miles to the east, six American hippies on a joy ride across Africa, crash their VW bus in to a cemetery. While they wait for repairs they scandalize the local missionaries and Brenda Carter impulsively marries an African student.

2013: Brenda Carter brings Sarah, her deeply troubled granddaughter to Africa to explore her roots and meet her grandfather; the man Brenda married and abandoned fifty years before. When a Peace Corps worker is murdered, a baby is kidnapped, and all contact with the outside world is severed by a torrential rain storm, Sarah becomes an unwilling investigator making the connection between the abandoned boy from the Congo, the truth behind her grandmother’s marriage, and fifty years of undercover CIA involvement in the politics of Africa.

A compelling tale of Africa today where witchdoctors co-exist with modern medicine, where warlords carry cell phones, and where one small nation stands at the cross roads of America’s War on Terror.

'An excellent read, I love the fact that it is centered around a country and continent which has a lot of mystique and tradition, which we are still trying to understand. I cannot praise this book high enough, this is my favourite read of the year,' - Beck Valley Books

'This is a riveting tale that will provide background and depth to some of the news stories about African events today. Highly recommended.'- review from Amazon

'The book has so many levels. It was a fantastic read and although there were moment I wanted to stop because of the sheer level of scary evil, I am glad I pressed through. I am, once again completely astonished and awed at this author's ability to take me on such a amazing adventure.
BRAVO! Really well done. Amazing. Read it.' - review from Amazon

Eileen Enwright Hodgetts is a much traveled writer. Brought up in England and Wales, she has also lived and worked in South Africa and Uganda. Eileen and her husband, Graham, now make their home in the USA. Eileen’s life experiences allow her to use exotic backgrounds for her novels and to understand how an adventure can begin with just one small incident. For ten years she directed a humanitarian mission in East Africa as an employee of Christ Church at Grove Farm in Sewickley, PA. and her whole family continues to be involved in Uganda through the Ugandan Gold Coffee project bringing coffee to the United States and returning the profits to Uganda to be used for drilling water wells. Much of her writing reveals not only her great fondness for the British Isles, but also her British sense of humor which still sees the funny side of most situations.

In addition to writing novels, Eileen Enwright Hodgetts is also an accomplished playwright with a number of national awards to her credit. Her novel, Whirlpool, began life as a stage musical about a free-spirited woman and her desire to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. The musical played at the Niagara Falls Convention Center in Niagara Falls, New York. In 1993 the Mayor of Niagara Falls, NY, proclaimed the summer of 1993 as Whirlpool Theater Days in honor of the production.

When she is not writing novels, or staging plays, she is exploring the art of cheesemaking.